The Lake Collage

I'm happy to announce that i've finally made another collage.
This one uses only images from National Geographic U.S. Ed. April 2007.

Here is a little video i did for the Making Off (in YouTube: Making Off - The Lake Collage):




I also took some photos during the process. Check it out here on flickr.

Trips and News

Long time i don't focus on my artsy site...
Happens i was (still am) working a lot. Went 2 times to USA and 1 to Spain (for work meetings) but of course i did some culture expeditions (in Madrid, New York and Seattle).
I took a lot of photos (btw i should add a new Photos section here, but know that they are all in my Flickr Photos collection).
My last trip was to Madrid (last week) and i came up with tagging my favorite photos. (btw2 i'm spending too much time trying to organize myself by tagging, managing photos, cut-ups etc... should try to take a break on this).
One sidenote: why the heck can't we take photos in museums and exhibitions in Madrid? Even Andy Goldswhorty's WOOD! Anyway, i obviously ignored the signs and happened to take lovely pics.

So now i'm back to collaging and below is a collage i'm for some months trying to finish (as it was yesterday):

my collage in the 2008 calendar

I'm participanting in the selection to the 2008 calendar entitled "Global Artists for Peace".
The artworks are here: http://virtual.tart.co.nz/exhibit.htm

My collage is the SELF, done using only images of the National Geographic (Dec 2004).

Self

You can vote in 10 collages until next tuesday (Sept/04).
Just email your preferences to: dale(at)tart.co.nz
with the subject : "vote for Peace images"
(example: iuri kothe - self)

On the bottom of the page you can also order the Calendar.
thanks, iuri

UPDATE (Sept/05/07): My collage WAS SELECTED!!! Thanks for all votings. iuri

Goldsworthy and Murcof

I'm absolutely fascinated with the works of Andy Goldsworthy and Murcof's music.
So here is my humble homage to both, done on this shiny sunday afternoon:




Youtube link: Rivers Tides & Mes.

Ghiroma and Accessibility

Here is a nice example of why FreeCulture is beautiful!
I just received a link to a video about Web Accessibility (YouTube link here) and
starting at 1:57min is the song i did with Folopo: "Ghiroma - Last American Haiku".
Exactly during the part they curse Globo!
Ps: Nice to be listed on the credits (in the 2nd part).
Altough i agree (with my collages) that it is sometimes difficult to remember the sources.

Sold in New Zeland and my Exhibition Map

Just wanted to share that my collage:

"Human Alien Artefakt"

was sold in New Zealand!!! During the Human Artefakts 7 : Christchurch Arts Festival in Christchurch [New Zealand] (map)

Also check out where i have exhibited in "iuri's collages exhibition's google maps".

On making music

I'm now trying to make two songs, one i started July 17th (9 days ago), using 'Arvo Pärt - Für Alina' cut-ups. And the other, March 28h (4 months). But i can't finish them...

I work with it for a night, than sleep over, try to listen the next day in other environment (while biking specially), than some days later i go add some and change other parts, but almost always i have trouble liking it as a whole.

One thing i noticed is that the songs change completely on different speakers and headphones. What i find interesting on the computer sucks, on the iPod or at my home stereo. It has to do with equalization, i think. Some beautiful timbres and harmonies simply disappear on some speakers, other parts get unnecessary focus, like some vocal percussion i'm trying out from freesound.

Probably this two songs won't be released. I'm pretty sure (today at least) that they lack in structure, are too repetitive (while not being minimal, as i wanted). But i'm learning... This remembers me Andy Goldsworthy (in the Rivers and Tides documentary) describing (during one 'implosion') that every time his egg-stone sculpture 'implodes' due to gravity, he learns a little more about the stone... then after some trials, he makes it.

I shall now try a new one, starting with Diplo's tip: "Start with the perfect bass loop".
Hopefully this will be a collaboration with Folopo, with our hibernated Ghiroma project.

exhibition in New Zealand

This might be the last exhibition place of the Human Artefakts Collages World Tour, which started in 2006 and went trough USA, Germany and is now in New Zealand.
I'm showing there 2 collages: 'SELF' and 'Human Alien Artefakts';

Here is the presentation from the Festival's website:

"Ever since Picasso and Braque first coined the term at the beginning of the twentieth century, collage (from the French coller, 'to paste') has played a significant role in the hands of those artists sensitive to its potential in a modern world saturated with mass media images and disposable forests of paper.

Accumulations & Transformations brings together two collage-based international shows. Human Artefakts is an international collage and assemblage exhibition featuring 50 artists from USA, Australia, Brazil, Romania, Russia, France, Canada, Mexico, Germany and NZ including Lise Menu (France), Truman Capone (USA), Maria Nichita (Romanaia), luri Kothe (Brazil) and Dale Copeland (NZ).

The Republic of Letters is an international book art project featuring among others Cordula Kagemann (Germany), Dale Copeland (NZ), Linda Wood Feldman (USA), Mimi Shapiro (USA), Tricia Burr (USA/ Russia), Mary ellen Long (USA), Hans-Jurgen Korner (Germany) and Janet Jones (USA)."

Very nice isn't it? : )

Landscape Tilt

Now i'm finally trying again some bigger collages. This one took me a lot of time, because of the rules i made up: obviously and not-so-obvious connections between the images; i used two separated (up and down) green landscapes and 2 volcanoes photos (finding the second wasn't easy). All photos are from National Geographic, unfortunately don't know the photographers for credit, but hope they like it! So here it is: Landscape Tilt

Ants helping ants video

Here's a little video i did this month in Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, checking out some Ants: Ants helping ants (YouTube link)

Feeding

here's my new analog collage, trying to use no special theme in the beginning only one rule: using only photos of Nat. Geographic USA Ed. September 1993. Altough the theme appeared later: Feeding

Knowledge

Some months ago, i saw this 2min intro of James Burke's - The Day the Universe Changed, and i simply couldn't forget this sentence:

"You see what your knowledge tells you you're seeing"

Later i came across Dan Everett's work about the brazilian tribe Pirahã. I advice you reading this article from Spiegel - Living without Numbers or Time. Here's a short sample:

"...His findings have brought new life to a controversial theory by linguist Benjamin Whorf, who died in 1941. Under Whorf's theory, people are only capable of constructing thoughts for which they possess actual words. In other words: Because they have no words for numbers, they can't even begin to understand the concept of numbers and arithmetic..."

Hm..., maybe some brain theory can help us out? Check this TED video, Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing. Where he suggests that "the brain is more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next."

Another some-way-related article is V.S. Ramachandran's - The neurology of self-awareness.
Ok. I'm no brain biologist-psychologist researcher, but like you, i do have one and would like to know how it works...

What do you think about this? Do you know some other related articles or videos? Use the comment below to help me/us out.

WireFrame and Prototype with Inkscape

After spending some time looking for wireframing and prototyping softwares and tutorials, i realized that Inkscape is the best, fastest and easiest one. So here is a little tutorial on how i use it.

The only problem for me is that the text tool doesn't support underline and justification yet, but it will be done in this Google Summer of Code 2007 project. And running it in X11 on the Mac isn't so nice too, but there are also people working on this.

Opening inkscape will show you a blank page (portrait oriented). Go to File > Document Properties:

1 Adjusting the Document Properties

1.1 the Page tab:
- Default Units: px (pixels)
- Background: Double-click on the Background color, set the RGBA to ffffffff to have an white background when exporting the bitmap
- Size: Lets make 3 pages of a 1000x700 px site, with 100px between the pages, so the Width=3200px and Height=700px

1.2 Grid/Guides:
- check the Show grid box
- Units=px , Origin (xy)=0 , Spacing(xy)=10 , major grid line every 10 lines

1.3 Snap:
- this will depend on you, i use to change this many times during the work.

2 Layers

I tend to use only 3 layers: slice, content and basic (desc. order).
- basic: the skeleton that will appear on all pages, like header and footer (see item 3 - cloning)
- content: the lorem ipsum, images etc (see item 4)
- slice: just transparent rectangles to export the PNGs easily (see item 5)



3 Cloning (Header, Footer, ...)

Inkscape doesn't (yet) has master pages like inDesign, but you can tweak this using the cloning feature.
- Select the objects you want to clone, group them (ctrl+g)
- With the group selected, give it a nice name (right-click:Object Properties), Id: basicframe and Label:#basicframe
- Now go to Edit / Clone / Create Tiled Clones
- Go to the second tab (Shift) and set the spacing you want. Since we have 1000px width and decided 100px between pages, select 10% on the Shit X Per Column.
- We want 2 adicional pages, so select Rows, columns: 1, 2. And click Create.
Now one of the clones, is under the original (already selected), so just move the original down (shift+downarrow), select the clone and move it to the right. Down forget to upper the original again.
Also give the clones nice names (right-click:Object Properties) like basicframe_clone1 and basicframe_clone2



Observation: if you want to add more things to the clone (ex: an rectangle on the header), just create it and move this object (yes, with the mouse) into the group using the XML Editor (ctrl+shift+X).

Now lock the basic layer (on the Layers Window - ctrl+shift+L) to prevent accidents. Everytime you need to change something there, unlock, change and lock again.

You can download this basic wireframe template here (right-click and save as...)

4 Filling the wireframe

With the basic layer locked, select the content layer and make your stuff there: add buttons, lorem ipsums, lines etc.

5 Exporting to PNG with the Slice layer

This slice trick i learned on this youtube tutorial: Slice Web Page Layout (higher quality video here) by heathenx:
- Go to the slice layer
- create an rectangle on top of one of your pages
- name it nicely (ex: index, search, register) with the 'right-click:Object Properties'
- make it transparent: 'right-click: Fill and Stroke'. Stroke:None and Fill:alpha=0
- click on the rectangle, and then Edit/Export Bitmap
- select the resolution and voila!

Other tips:

Images

Don't vectorize your images, just drag'n'drop the image (jpg, png) inside the file and if you are going to switch computers, edit the XML to the relative path: images/photo1.png

Custom your Color Palette

This is a very important time saver. The default palette, on the footer of inkscape has too many colors. You can use the palettes presented like the "Websave22" (just click on the arrow on the right side of the palette) or make your own with GIMP (check this tutorial on the Custom Swatches or Palette).

Ghiroma Last American Haiku Music Video

So here is the result of 2 days of Premier Pro workshop (video tutorial), the Music Video of "Ghiroma - Last American Haiku" (listen here). This is Ghiroma's (Folopo and I) first song, from 2004. The videos are all Betty Boop from archive.org. I called it "Drunk as a Dog" (yes, i'm no good at viral marketing).



See this in Youtube or in Vimeo or download it here.

Projeto Mix

For the second year, Folopo and I will DJ at Projeto Mix, as our duo Ghiroma.
I also will give an analog collage workshop there.
Projeto Mix 2: May 25 to 27.
See you there

Boipeba - Digital Collage

Now i'm finally back to digital collaging!!! Just finished it, working for 3 nights on this:

boipeba

I used only my photos (mostly from boipeba - bahia, brazil). I'm really tired of this copyright nonsense, locking for images i can use freely, gonna take more photos now again. To see the original photos, pass the mouse over the image boipeba @ flickr.com. I also posted a screenshot of the photoshop layers so you can take a look on how easy it is to make this things:

I made it specially to use as wallpaper, but for my monitor needed to cut the sides a but, you can get it here (1280x1024 px).

Like always, you can get the original size (nice print quality) for free.

5 new baseball collages

Here are 5 new baseball collages that i'm sending to the USA. They will be part of a virtual exhibition at www.baseballart.org (still offline yet). Enjoy:

"Baseball 10 (basebull)"


"Baseball 09 (baseoil)"


"Baseball 08"


"Baseball 07 (What Can I Do For You)"


"Baseball 06 (baserage)"

Check if it fits before cutting

Here is a little video tutorial i made on how to check if an image will fit in your collage.



YouTube Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG-bF1A3WSk

YouTube: Your Video with my Song

Nice! YouTube Labs 'made arrangements with artists and record labels so that you can add their songs to your YouTube videos'. I wasn't aware of it, but one song i released in ccmixter as Sohaclara is there: noTV. Two strong possibilities: 1- it got an Editorial Pick in ccmixter and 2- the name noTV.
So if you have a video on YouTube, go to AudioSwap page, click 'Try AudioSwap' then you'll choose a video and by clicking 'Replace Audio', you'll be redirected to a page like this:

Go to Genre: Electronica > Artist: Sohaclara > Track: noTV.

If you do change your audio with this song, sent me the link in the comments here.

a nonlinear rio sampa trip

A Nonlinear Rio Sampa Trip

view it in: youtube, google video.
download: highQuality .avi or iPod .mp4 version.

Filmed on March/09/2006 with my old (and dead) Canon PowerShot A300 digital camera, during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo. I remember that i had a terrible hangover that day, almost stayed in bed. The song is Drala, from Glen Velez (i'm sure he don't mind that i used it : ).

And i edited it on Feb/13&14/2007 (yesterday and before, at night) with (the crappy) iMovie. Crappy because i realised during this edition that singleTrack editing is too limited. Example, the part that wents black (in 2min) is because i couldnt anchor the clips to the audio. So during the 'audio syncing' on the latter clips, it moved a little the backwards clip to the right, so i got a nice black gap there... terrible! Anyway, i'm trying to install Final Cut Pro here, hope it runs...

I used only the basic effects and transitions, and one that i specially love is the mirror effect. I've seen it many times, but one video that uses it the best (and yes, mine is a kind of homage to this) is the music video of Four Tet - She Moves She (see here or here). Mirror effect works very well for minimal music (i tried using other four tet, steve reich, but i preferred glen velez). Here is a screenshot of iMovie and its mirror effect:

This my first finished attempt to edit video and specially trying to sync it with the music. So i hope that with practice i can get my ideas into reality (and, of course, random beauties are also welcomed).

PS: Another related video i've made is Brasilia 360º (unedited but very nice).

Nature Shorts

Sometimes i think i should apply to a job at National Geographic...






Butterfly

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Tree Storm Fingers

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Palm Tree ByeBye

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Starfish (Estrela do Mar)
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Praying Mantis

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Walden Insect

Terry Riley

It's been almost one month since i'm almost everyday listening to the minimalist Terry Riley.
I advice you specialy: Atlantis Nath (download here) and No Man's Land. Minimalist piano (and sometimes he sings too) with touches of indian music. Amazing stuff!

5 Baseball collages

Below are my 5 first analog collages that i've made for my first big art deal.
More to come soon, now i'm busy updating my site!

"Baseball 5"

"Baseball 4"

"Baseball 3"

"Baseball 2"

"Baseball 1"

image tagging (iptc, exif, xmp)

Like i did last year (or was it 2005?) with my music - because managing 90GB of mp3 isn't easy in the folder hierarchy and i the iPod needs the basic Artist, Title, Genre tags - this year is time to tag my images (photos and collages).

So i found some softwares that would to the job: Exifer, PixVue ... (more here). For now, the best one to batch rename is Adobe's Bridge (which i always found very slow and unbrowsable). This is nice because the IPTC tags are industries standard and written directly inside the JPEG or PSD file (not like iTunes and iPhoto!!!).

Another great feature is that the keywords (tags), title and descriptions are read by flickr! So i don't need to write the infos twice, and they are stored in the file!

Now i would like to know one nice cross platform viewer and iptc browser... something faster than Brigde please!

Adolar’s Updated Site

Last night i've updated the site of my friend Adolar Gangorra.
Made some little lovely hacks on the Wordpress blog and siteStructure.
So go there, check it out (in portuguese):

www.adolargangorra.com.br

because i'll need some time to update this one site of mine
(but i'll do it soon!)... i have 5 new collages to upload here.

15 days offline

that was really good! 15 days offline...
now i'm back, will slowly improve my site and
make more collages and music this year.

happy 2007 for you few readers : )